I'm Considering Pulling the Trigger on a High-Endish S-VHS VCR

[PlayStation 2]

Well, yeah. Long story short I'm looking into getting a decent VCR that happens to have time-base correction among other features, and I found this one. I'm not 100% sure if I should use an eBay listing link for it but it's a JVC SR-V101US.

Here's a video that demonstrates how it cleans up a regular VHS tape.

But for $125, I genuinely don't know if it's worth that much even if I'd find great use for it.

Would it be worth paying that much? Should I try for something similar but cheaper? Would it be better just to get a better capture card for use on my VCR?

[ARikozuM]

This should be placed in Hobby Electronics, I believe. 

[ARikozuM]

I forgot to ask what you need the VCR for.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

I forgot to ask what you need the VCR for.

Personal use of copying tapes to my PC, hopefully in a high quality manner.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

Personal use of copying tapes to my PC, hopefully in a high quality manner.

I would just try a capture card if you've got one laying around.

[Gumi Rokkaku]

Quality looks nice enough.
Like previous comment said, capture card might be an easier route.

[AshleyAshes]

In the film industry I learned a term: Shit in, shit out.

But that said, it's important to know that SVHS and VHS are seperate formats.  Any commercially released home video tape is still only going to be VHS, so you have fairly limited benefits to gain.  Frankly, a VHS tape is inherently inferior to a composite video signal on it's own.  This is why LaserDisc was an improvement even if it was read only, laserdisc stores an optically encoded analog composite signal so it's 'as good' as a pure composite signal cause, well, that's what's on the disc.  The TBC feature to yield cleaner playback is one thing by the digital noise reduction is really just post processing and you can do lots of post processing once content has been ingested into a PC and make use of vastly improved techniques.  And frankly, post processing doesn't 'clean things' it 'changes things', weather that changes is 'better' is subjective to the viewer.

 

Not to mention any VHS tape of 24p content would be interlaced up to 60i using a 3:2 pulldown and no VHS deck is going to undo that.

[PlayStation 2]

19 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

In the film industry I learned a term: Shit in, shit out.

But that said, it's important to know that SVHS and VHS are seperate formats.  Any commercially released home video tape is still only going to be VHS, so you have fairly limited benefits to gain.  Frankly, a VHS tape is inherently inferior to a composite video signal on it's own.  This is why LaserDisc was an improvement even if it was read only, laserdisc stores an optically encoded analog composite signal so it's 'as good' as a pure composite signal cause, well, that's what's on the disc.  The TBC feature to yield cleaner playback is one thing by the digital noise reduction is really just post processing and you can do lots of post processing once content has been ingested into a PC and make use of vastly improved techniques.  And frankly, post processing doesn't 'clean things' it 'changes things', weather that changes is 'better' is subjective to the viewer.

 

Not to mention any VHS tape of 24p content would be interlaced up to 60i using a 3:2 pulldown and no VHS deck is going to undo that.

Most of the content I'll be dealing with is either going to come in at 480i60 if I end up with this.

With my current VCR (and if I bothered with an actual capture card instead of a shitty EasyCap) I could likely do 480p60 or 720p60 if I get really lazy.

If you're wondering why I can try for either, it's a story that can be shortened to a VHS/DVD combo recorder that has an HDMI port.

 

I guess I'm wondering if how the VCR does its own post-processing would be superior than what I could do with my current VCR. I'm just curious as to if it'd be worth the investment.

[emosun]

for 125$ it's not worth it. you can do far more post processing on your computer than the vcr will be capable of.

honestly your limitation here is the vhs format itself and not really the player. I have an older analog capture machine for composite signal I sometimes use , and anything that outputs a composite signal like an old games console always looks better than vhs tapes.

it just comes down to the vhs itself being inferior to what the signal is capable of.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, emosun said:

for 125$ it's not worth it. you can do far more post processing on your computer than the vcr will be capable of.

honestly your limitation here is the vhs format itself and not really the player. I have an older analog capture machine for composite signal I sometimes use , and anything that outputs a composite signal like an old games console always looks better than vhs tapes.

it just comes down to the vhs itself being inferior to what the signal is capable of.

Alright, I'll see what my plan will end up being.

[emosun]

 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, emosun said:

 

I've seen that video and I've seen a vwestlife video demonstrating how far VHS tapes can basically go when it comes to pre-recorded. I'll have to see what would be the best capture method for me.

Considering that my VCR has four outputs available (composite, S-video, component and HDMI) I'd just wonder what would be the best option.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Considering that my VCR has four outputs available (composite, S-video, component and HDMI) I'd just wonder what would be the best option.

well as he covers in the 8bit guy video , vhs is essentially worse than a raw composite signal.

So so long as you don't use a coax connection , then ANY signal will be superior to the vhs you're recording it from.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, emosun said:

well as he covers in the 8bit guy video , vhs is essentially worse than a raw composite signal.

So so long as you don't use a coax connection , then ANY signal will be superior to the vhs you're recording it from.

I guess now I'll start searching for a decent capture card.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I guess now I'll start searching for a decent capture card.

well pretty much any composite capture card from the past 10 year will work. We pretty much mastered analog composite capture as you know it's only a 480i signal so most machine 10-15 years ago had enough power to capture the signal.

 

your easycap , is most likely doing the same as these legacy machine were even then. is the easycap simply not creating a 480i file?

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, emosun said:

well pretty much any composite capture card from the past 10 year will work. We pretty much mastered analog composite capture as you know it's only a 480i signal so most machine 10-15 years ago had enough power to capture the signal.

 

your easycap , is most likely doing the same as these legacy machine were even then. is the easycap simply not creating a 480i file?

It does. It just records stuff quite poorly from a VCR even though its composite. I might be expecting a little too much but it is quite suspectable to dropping frames if something like static happens and it just doesn't look that good even for a VHS tape. 

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

it is quite suspectable to dropping frames if something like static happens

that can be a problem that it won't simply stay recording regardless of whats happening. I use an old pinnacle card that has a few settings that prevent it from cutting capture when it detects scene changes or detects blank spots in the tape.

your easycap may be seeing the static as blank spots in the tape , or , the vcr sees it as blank spots in the tape and changes it's signal output based on that.